Thailand floods spur SSD demand

Hard drive prices have steadily risen since October thanks to heavy flooding in Thailand, a country that accounts for around 70 percent of global hard drive related production.

This is leading to increased demand for solid state drives (SSDs) according to Micron Technology, one of the largest flash memory chip manufacturers in the world.

“Clearly there’s an increase in demand because of the Thailand flooding. There’s fewer hard drives and open slots [SATA port interface] and an SSD can fit in that slot nicely,” according Kevin Kilbuck, Director of Marketing for Micron’s NAND Solutions Group.

Ultrabooks are also spurring demand for SSD according to Troy Winslow, director of marketing for Intel’s flash division, as they either make use of SSD drives, or hybrid drives that incorporate SSD and HDD technologies.